Tag: pharmaceutical industry

Blog Posts (16)

February 12, 2016

When asked what enemies she was proud to have made during her political career, Hillary Clinton mentioned, in order, “the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies [and] the Iranians.” Pretty villainous company to place healthcare industries into. But … Continue reading →

March 2, 2015

[WSJ/MSN] —While waiting for an infusion of a drug that might save his life, 15-year-old Andrew Marella gripped the controls of an NFL videogame, the hand-held version of a sport he played when he could still run without fear. Andrew is in a clinical drug trial of cyclodextrin, a sugar-based substance that scientists hope will […]

September 25, 2014

[The Wall Street Journal] SAN DIEGO—Kendall French used to pitch drugs to doctors who could prescribe them. But many of those doctors now work for hospitals that don’t give them final say over what is on the menu of medicines they can pick. So when the GlaxoSmithKline PLC saleswoman began plugging two new lung-disease drugs […]

September 2, 2014

[NPR] No one likes it when a new drug in people’s medicine cabinets turns out to have problems — just remember the Vioxx debacle a decade ago, when the painkiller was removed from the market over concerns that it increased the risk of heart attack and stroke. To do a better job of spotting unforeseen risks […]

August 22, 2014

[The New York Times] PLAINSBORO, N.J. — Can good design help heal the sick? The University Medical Center of Princeton realized several years ago that it had outgrown its old home and needed a new one. So the management decided to design a mock patient room. Medical staff members and patients were surveyed. Nurses and […]

August 18, 2014

[CNBC] wo years ago, Nathalie Traller spent her days like any seventh-grader might. She played soccer and swam and studied for classes. Then Nathalie started getting bad headaches, the kind that made it hard for her to concentrate. A trip to the doctor revealed the unthinkable: a mass the size of a baseball in her […]

July 10, 2014

The latest revisions to the Declaration of Helsinki may weaken human research subject protections, particularly for participants in low and middle income countries, according to a recent analysis in BMJ. See the article here: http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g4254

July 8, 2014

[Forbes] Merck says that it “regrets” using legal threats to push a leading Italian researcher to muffle his public critiques of one of the company’s cholesterol drugs. Merck spokesman Steve Cragle writes: Merck is committed to the open and transparent exchange of scientific information. We believe this exchange should take place in medical meetings and […]

June 24, 2014

[TheEconomicTimes] Pharmaceutical companies having more than a 1% market share for any essential drugs may find it difficult to stop manufacturing those products. Since May, when the government brought into force a new drug-pricing system after a gap of 18 years, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority has denied such requests whenever the market share of […]

June 23, 2014

[Bloomberg] A widely publicized warning by U.S. regulators a decade ago about risks for teenagers taking antidepressants led to plummeting prescriptions and increased suicide attempts, Harvard University researchers said. As the public took the Food and Drug Administration’s 2004 warning to heart, adolescent attempted suicides increased 21.7 percent and a 31 percent decline in antidepressant […]

American Journal of Bioethics: Volume 8 Issue 8 - Aug 2008

News (6)

June 21, 2012 1:12 pm

Public health advocates on Wednesday accused the drug company Merck of improperly marketing an over-the-counter allergy medicine directly to children using animated characters from the movie “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.”

June 9, 2012 9:18 pm

After weeks of talks, drug industry lobbyists were growing nervous. To cut a deal with the White House on overhauling health care, they needed to be sure that President Obama would stop a proposal intended to bring down medicine prices.

May 9, 2012 10:15 am

Two senior senators said on Tuesday that they had opened an investigation into financial ties between producers of prescription painkillers and pain experts, patient advocacy groups and organizations that set guidelines on how doctors use the drugs.

May 2, 2012 3:38 pm

Next fall, the University of Pennsylvania will host a 10-day crash course in Bioethics in China, which some may argue is an oxymoron. The program will actually take place in Beijing and other cities, and include meetings with academics, policy makers and pharma folks, such as expats who work for large drugmakers. The plan is to not only review some of the hot-button issues – corruption, clinical trials, intellectual property and interactions between physicians and patients – but also delve into cultural differences that shape the way business is done there.

April 25, 2012 11:38 am

Independent experts have condemned the Swiss pharmaceuticals company Novartis for trying to force the NHS to buy an expensive drug to treat patients suffering from a degenerative eye disease, rather than using a cheaper, unlicensed alternative. Novartis is taking four NHS areas in the south of England to a judicial review because they have allowed doctors to prescribe the anti-cancer drug Avastin to treat the wet form of age-related macular degeneration.

April 24, 2012 11:23 am

Social media proved to be one powerful tool for a mother dying of breast cancer and desperate to get a drug that has yet to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration… Gant, 46, posted the video on YouTube as an attempt to plead with the FDA to allow her to use a trial drug known as pertuzumab under compassionate use. The FDA is expected to approve the drug, developed by Genentech, on June 8. But Gant doesn’t expect to live that long.